Well fuckery. I mean, Fourth of July weekend is traditionally a feast for your everyday Pulp Sports Crime Writer, and not just because Uncle Rick and Aunt Rita made hot dogs AND ribs AND hot links AND italian beef AND that shitty Jello-mold thing. It’s the perfect convergence of 1. true unstructured off-season (except for Eli- Olivia put him in a Read2Succeed Camp so he wouldn’t backslide over the summer), 2. drinking, 3. being around one’s “boys” (looking at you, Johnny!), and 4. explosives. Normalish men without occupation-related brain damage have a hard time staying out of trouble on Gunpowder Christmas. Hell, last year we had not one but two fireworks-related NFL injuries AND stolen medical records to boot!

So imagine my dismay when my busy schedule of sitting on wet grass watching a Cowboy Mouth concert and drinking was not interrupted with urgent news bulletins about an armed Vontaze Burfict holed up in an Arby’s because they mixed an onion ring in with his curly fries. Or anything even remotely resembling Crime News I Could Use. I even sullied myself and my browser history by going to TMZ Sports, for Bleergh’s sake.

Literally, the best I’ve got is an undrafted Division II rookie guard out of the University of West Georgia (formerly the Fourth District Agricultural and Mechanical School) who allegedly got shot twice in the leg and then picked up by police for undisclosed reasons. Unconfirmed reports state that a pair of sweatpants were also taken into custody for suspicion of involvement in the shooting.

JHVH-1 willing, reports will slowly trickle out about the sixteen prostitutes that spent the weekend at a coked-out Virginia McCaskey’s Lake Forest mansion or somesuch.

The only other potential option for charging this week is the case of Ciara and “Future”, who is apparently a rapper who is famous for more than just knocking up Ciara. The involuntarily-chaste singer is allegedly concerned that “Future” has made threats against her fiance, Stock-Photo-Black-Person Russell Wilson. Those threats allegedly came in two forms: emojis of guns pointed at footballs, and a lyric from one of his songs “Tryna (expletive) my baby mama, dog what’s up with you? You gon’ make me get that heat, I’m pulling up on you.”

Several things should be pointed out here. First, the song in question is called “Juice”, and opens with a clip of the verdict announcement in the OJ Simpson trial, so at least on the surface, it appears to refer to Ronald Goldman, not Russell Wilson (knife versus “heat” reference notwithstanding). Second, if this is the level that rapper-threats have sunk to, I weep for the state of music. I remember when a diss track had to repeatedly accuse one of being a submissive homosexual and/or call out the threatened party by name to even get noticed. Now we’ve got vague references and fucking EMOJIS?!?! You’re over thirty, “Future”- you gotta mature your game.

As a partially unrelated note, my exhaustive background research into “Future” revealed that one of his more famous songs is “Fuck Up Some Commas”. That makes at least two popular songs expressing a deep and abiding hatred for the humble comma, after Vampire Weekend’s vicious “Oxford Comma.”

This seems odd, both because 1. neither song makes any further comments (positive or negative) on any point of grammar or punctuation, and 2. they come from pretty much the opposite ends of the musical spectrum, suggesting they developed independently. Isn’t that WEIRD? /sips lardachinno

FINALLY: Tom Brady has left Donald Trump supporters feeling deflated /ducks tomato/ over his decision not to accept his alleged friend’s invitation to attend the Republican National Convention and show his support. The multimillionaire athlete and his supermodel wife say they regret not being able to spend their summer in Cleveland talking to a bunch of old guys. Reactions have ranged from “NAWT CLASSY!” to “FAAAAHCK YOU!”